When Madeline Was Young (28 page)

"Hello," she said.

"What do you mean, 'Hello'?"

She continued chopping. "Everyone," she said, "deserves their privacy."

"Their privacy."

I had not yet learned that Madeline had had a hysterectomy, and I wondered if I should give my mother a lecture, edify her about the consequences of irresponsible sexual behavior. Or was she advocating free love for each member of the family? Were there going to be bundles of retarded joy at nine-month intervals from here on out? I supposed genetically they'd have normal children, but who would care for the pint-sized geniuses when the parents had trouble figuring out how to set an alarm clock? I was going to seize my book from my own bed and leave for the farthest reaches of town. Only to see, on my way back upstairs, that their door had popped open, a two-or-soinch aperture. There was Mikey standing stark naked in profile, there his tight little butt, his Buddha belly, his magnificent--and long!--glistening, ready, and willing tumescence. If I called it that to myself, it was because I'd been reading great literature. And Madeline, or anyway her legs on the bed, Madeline, herself waiting and ready. I walked down the stairs, out of the house, thinking of the few couples who, it was rumored at school, were having sexual intercourse. I'd invite them over so they could fuck on the dining-room table as m
y m
other was trying to serve dinner; they could fuck on the kitchen floor, in the tub, on the piano while Louise practiced; they could fuck in my parents' bed, on top of them while they slept.

So Madeline, to use Buddy's phrase, had gotten some relief. "It's funny," I said to him, "but it seemed to me that you were beating up Jerry for the wrong reason. Not that it matters, but the fashion show was the greater cruelty, far more ugly, meaner, than the generalized humiliation of the sexual favor. The evil tease of the runway was perfectly tuned to Madeline's vulnerability." I'd wanted to tell him that for a long time. "Your outrage at Mikey's being a moron--"

"You know, Brains?" He shook his head, the slow back-and-forth of amazement. "Isn't Brains a fucking cute little scientist, dissecting a monkey in the basement!" He managed to say that with almost no rancor. "Here comes Brains with a bucket of dead fish, the scholar"--he let out a cackle--"with his head up his ass."

I had once wanted to set him on fire, almost sure in the moment that I was capable of it. We were again coming close to the tender, murderous point at the center of our fraternal affection. "It was good of you," I went on, "to prevent the neighborhood from erupting, to go door to door and absolve Cleveland of guilt in the beating. It turned out there was racial hatred on the block. Although not everyone believed you--some of those women held it against us for a long time, that we'd sheltered the Negroes. I don't think Mrs. Pindel ever spoke to my mother again.

"That asswipe," Buddy spat, still referring, I guessed, to Jerry. "The little faggot."

A clarifying moment, in the smoky bar, the glass to my lips. Buddy perhaps had clocked Jerry most of all because of the whiff in the loft of our neighbor's homosexuality. Maybe the thrashing had had nothing to do with Madeline: Brains, at last understanding the deeper impulse of his strong and courageous cousin, the hero, and champion of certain minorities.

"So," I said after a decent interval, "you're going to make a life of it. A career military man."

Buddy was signed up for the Drill Sergeant Program, a future that had amused the cousins with its rightness. He explained at some length what was required of him, how he'd gone through security clearance before and passed various tests, and also proved that he had no speech impediment, an important detail in the drill-sergeant profession. He was hopeful that with his experience he'd advance quickly. He'd been in the army long enough to assume that I knew what he was talking about, that I was familiar with the chain of command and the military acronyms, that they were all household terms. Even if I didn't understand the finer points, I could see that his service in Vietnam had somehow not diminished his enthusiasm for being a soldier, that if anything his commitment had intensified through the years. When I wondered out loud if that was true he said, "Someone has to do this job. It's up to those of us left to rebuild the reputation of the military, to keep our great country strong. I ask myself, if I don't do it, who will?"

When I didn't say anything he repeated, "Who will?"

The aim was admirable, I said.

"You think so, Brains?" He turned his body on the stool so that he faced me, so that he could look at me squarely.

"Sure," I said, "yes. Absolutely."

"Yeah, well, I'd like to pass down some of what I've learned in the field and contribute to our nation being strong. You better believe it. I'd like to combat all the shit that's been heaped on the good men who fought hard."

I had the unfamiliar sensation then that although he was staring, it wasn't for the purpose of seeing me. For a minute he went still. He was no longer present, just like that, gone. It was as if he'd been cut away from himself. Even though I couldn't have imagined what hell he'd been through, I thought I understood how going to war would separate you not only from your old friends but from the civilian you'd once been, how you might not be able to reclaim much of your old character. That such a thing would happen to Buddy, that he'd lose his essential Buddyness--I'd rather have had him insulting me o
r b
eing furious for a wrongheaded reason than going so quiet. "Aren't you," he said, finally blinking, taking a handful of the pretzels, "aren't you going to ask if I believed in the war, since your mother isn't here to grill me?"

At the ready to be obedient, I said, "Did you believe in the war?"

He threw the snack mix in his mouth, chewing, chewing and reflecting, as if he hadn't solicited the question, as if he didn't know the answer. After a while he said, "I hate to say this in present company, but whether you believe in it or not is beside the point. Tell that to Aunt Julia. You've over there, you have a job to do, it's a job. You're bored off your ass half the time, you hope nobody in the detachment goes too nuts, you hope you don't go nuts, you hope your superiors aren't sadists, you hope no one gets so drunk they start shooting you, you hope the guy who got blown up screwing a fourteen-year-old gook--you hope his mother doesn't write to you to ask about his noble death in battle." He put his hand back in the feed bowl. "It's a job, like I said."

I was relieved when he changed the subject, when he said, "So--you're going to be a doc. Make the big bucks."

"I'll be working in a small-town hospital, I hope." The fucking cute little scientist tells his dream to the drill sergeant. "Internal medicine."

"You always were a whore for guts, weren't you, pal?"

"A real whore," I agreed.

"That's great, Brains. I'll make sure to get to your doorstep before I have my heart attack. Which might happen soon, since I'm about to be a married man." He did liven up then, telling me about Joelle, the beauty queen, a kindergarten teacher, the sister of an academy friend. I assumed he'd been careful not to catch anything overseas, or, if he had, to get it treated. Surely everything unsavory that happened stayed within the group, the exploits collectively blacked out when the troops touched down on American soil.

Soon after, when we were parting, he said, "I forgive you--you know that, right? Don't you?"

"What?"

He gripped my hand. "For not serving." He held on to me, unwilling to let go. It seemed, it did seem that he meant what he'd said. He was chewing gum, his mouth the only part of him in motion. If Tessa had been born and grown and present, she would have whipped up a story about our meeting in no time. She might have noted his urgency, his nervousness. She might have said he wanted me to forgive him, but for what exactly I didn't know.

Chapter
Thirteen

WHEN RUSSIA'S HUSBAND WAS SHOT DEAD OUTSIDE OF THE
pharmacy on the South Side, it was Buddy, out of all the absent Macivers, whom the widow missed the most. That killing in the spring of 1968 was sandwiched between Martin Luther King's and Bobby Kennedy's assassinations, but, then, everyone i
n t
hat year seemed to have personal claims of violence that went along with the public tragedies. Elroy was ours. My mother phoned Louise and me at college, saying that we must com
e b
ack for the funeral, that, no matter Louise's part in her friend's senior recital or an exam I had to study for in genetics, Russia was family. Our presence at the service was required.

"Family?" Louise said to me. "I hate it when she says that. I've never even met Elroy Crockerby."

"Never met Elroy?" I didn't say that I had seen him only once, although the ten-minute sighting had made an impression and I had not forgotten him. For the first time it occurred to me that Russia had always had to work on Christmas Eve. Where was Elroy while his wife was baking rolls at the Macivers'? Maybe Russia would rather have stayed home, gone to church, and cooked exclusively for her man. My father always drove down to pick her up before breakfast and took her back after the last dish was washed, around midnight. I wondered if Elroy had routinely worked on the holiday, at the Michigan Avenue Hotel, where he was a doorman.

To Louise I said, "Why didn't Elroy ever come to Christmas Eve?"

"Because slaves leave their families when the master says. They have to abandon their husbands to serve dinner up at the plantation house."

Louise's trombonist had recently jilted her, running off with a dippy flutist--a modifier she used, she explained, even though it was redundant. She'd had a disappointing audition for a summer program she was desperate to attend, and she was on edge about that outcome. There was no point arguing with her when she was already scrappy. "I'm not going to the funeral to satisfy Mom's idea of our racially balanced family," she said. "I'm sorry, but I'm not going."

We both did fly to Chicago for the morning service, and were back in Ohio with an hour to spare for Louise's recital. The tickets cost my parents a fortune, but they insisted it was money well spent. Lu and I had never been to Russia's neighborhood, let alone her church or her house. Over the phone my mother said she was thankful a white person hadn't killed Elroy. "If there is anything to be thankful for in this situation," she amended. The murderer had been caught five minutes after the shooting, with Elroy's wallet in his pocket, including the kingly sum of $12.42.

I remembered my mother's words as I took my place in the front pew of the Pathway to Victory Baptist Church. Russia had gathered my aunts, uncles, first cousins, second cousins, and great-aunt around her in the vestibule. This was well before the O'Days moved to Florida, and Mikey and Madeline were there, too. Since Russia had always been fond of Mikey, Mrs. O'Day, after hemming and hawing, gave permission for her son to go to the dangerous South Side, with the stipulation that he be home before dark. Russia had drawn me to her chest, her long spidery arms flapping at my back. "Timothy," she cried, "my boy, my own child." Her voice had gone thin and wavery. We processed up the aisle, all of us in a clump behind the casket, all of us ahead of the Crockerby retinue, the sixty or so family member
s w
ho were shedding their tears. My mother was right: how much more terrible it would have been to be on display and in the prized seats if one of us had killed Elroy.

Every Saturday afternoon, Russia cleaned the church with two teenage boys in tow. The curved oak beams across the ceiling gleamed as if they'd been rubbed hard by a brave crew outfitted with chamois cloths and furniture polish. There was no ladder that could have reached those high places, and I imagined the boys swinging from beam to beam as if they alone knew the purpose of the design. "No more of that monkeyshines!" Russia would shout at them. Whatever building she cleaned was a place she felt was hers, and at the funeral her head was high, not only as star mourner but with that air of ownership. She was wearing a black slippery-looking dress that stuck a little to her stockings, and a deep-purple sweater with gems embedded and twinkling along the button row. The tragedy had already made her scrawny; she later told me she'd sobbed her flesh away.

At the altar there was an enormous china vase, big as a washtub, filled with gladiolas, sent by Figgy. So of course we felt she was with us. Two steps away from that floral monument, the eighteen Macivers in our drab good clothes were in a line, squeezed into the pew. Behind us, the sea of dark faces, the shine of their mourning black. Russia sat next to her beloved Mr. Aaron, holding my father's hand in her lap through the service.

The casket had been parked next to Figgy's bouquet, and so we had continuous viewing without having to stand up or crane our necks. I had briefly seen the neighbor boy Cody Rockard when he'd been laid out, but I had not ever had the occasion to study a dead person for the length of a Baptist funeral. It must have been something of a job to put together a man who had been shot in the head and the chest, to make him not only presentable but recognizable. The one time I'd met Elroy, I'd been walking around downtown with my father and we'd stopped at the hotel to greet him. In the casket, resting on the cream-colored satin, he seemed all bones in his beige suit, n
o s
ubstance to his body, and I doubted that his eyelashes had curled in real life, and it seemed unlikely that his nose had lain so fiat to his face or that his hair was normally dyed a blackish purple. They'd put a cap on him to cover the cavity the bullet had made, and it was set at a rakish angle--Elroy Crockerby, the life of the party, a regular boulevardier on his way to the pharmacy.